At the dawn of the 19th century, the world population hit a big milestone: 1 billion people.

Over the next 220 years, the number grew to eight times that, or the 8 billion people who live on the planet today, with half of the growth occurring since 1975.

As Visual Capitalist’s Bhabna Banerjee and Pallavi Rao detail below, this continuous climb in global population has been possible thanks to advancements in healthcare and nutrition.

However, the UN forecasts that rapid growth will slow down – and may even stop entirely by 2100 – because of falling fertility rates.

What does that mean for modern nation states conditioned to expect a constant influx of new citizens and labor to power their economies? And how can those changing economies adapt to a shrinking population?

To understand that, we need to first untangle fertility rates, and why they’re falling.

Explained: Fertility and Replacement Rates

The total fertility rate is the average number of births per woman over a lifetime. This measurement makes two key assumptions, however:

• The woman will live to the end of her childbearing years

• The woman will bear children according to the age-specific fertility rates currently observed

Both assumptions add some uncertainty to future fertility rate projections. However, decades of past data collected by the World Bank help show some overall trends around the world, and in many countries.

 The age-specific fertility rate (ASFR) “measures the annual number of births to women of a specified age or age group per 1,000 women in that age group,” according to the UN.

The world fertility rate (expressed as the number of children per woman) has been falling steadily since the 1970s.

In 2020, the world’s fertility rate stood at 2.3, slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman, which allows for one generation to replace itself. This is down more than two times from 4.7 in 1960.

But the world’s average hides the vast disparities between the fertility rate of countries. We dive into the differences below.

Which Country has the Highest Fertility Rate?

According to the UN, nearly two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a region where the fertility rate is below the critical 2.1 threshold. In the table below, countries are ranked from the highest to lowest average births per woman in 2020.

The African country of Niger currently has the highest fertility rate, at 6.9, which means on average, a woman in Niger will have seven children in her lifetime.

With the exception of Afghanistan (14th), all of the top 30 countries are found on the African continent. In fact, it’s estimated that Africa will add 2.5 billion new people by 2100, while most continents will actually flatline in terms of population growth.

At the bottom of the rankings, the country with the lowest fertility rate is South Korea, at 0.84.

Interestingly, many of the current most populous countries of the world—including China, India, and the U.S.—are all below replacement levels of fertility, with parts of Europe and North America having had persistently low fertility levels since the 1970s.

However, even the countries that currently have high fertility rates have seen a steep decline over the last 60 years. Why?

Why are Fertility Rates Falling All Over The World?

Declining fertility rates are a consequence of a confluence of many related factors, including (but not limited to):

• Better access to contraception
• Improving opportunities for women, outside of childbearing
• Robust healthcare that lowers mortality rates of children

In the past, a larger number of children meant more chances of some making it to adulthood since infant mortality was so high. Women were also restricted to childbearing and rearing, and lacked access to contraception which led to increased—and sometimes unwanted—pregnancies.

Declining fertility rates are thus a triumph of improved socioeconomic development for many countries.

Consequences of Declining Fertility Rates

Although there are obvious issues with our large global population today, a different set of issues arise when fertility rates fall below replacement levels.

Dropping fertility rates can lead to shrinking populations and a higher ratio of the elderly to working adults—which will have unwanted economic consequences like increased healthcare costs and a reduced tax base.

Short-term solutions like immigration can help until populations are shrinking in every country. Longer-term solutions—reducing the cost of raising a child, and providing better support for families with children—are common strategies deployed to ward off demographic disaster.

The current crop of humanity has never had to contend with shrinking populations on a global scale. How will this reshape human livelihoods, priorities and expectations from life? We might soon find out.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

A classified Pentagon document purports to show that self-professed neutral Serbia, which has deep ties with Russia, sent or agreed to send lethal aid to Kyiv…

Serbia, a country that has publicly maintained its neutrality amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been secretly supplying Kyiv with weapons, or at least agreed to do so, according to a leaked U.S. intelligence document.

The document, which has been seen by the Reuters news agency, provided a summary of the responses by European governments to Kyiv’s request for weapons and military training.

A chart within the document showed that Serbia had agreed to send lethal aid to Ukraine, or had already supplied it; it also stated that Serbia had the political will and military ability to further arm Ukraine in the future.

“The document is marked Secret and NOFORN, prohibiting its distribution to foreign intelligence services and militaries. It is dated March 2, and embossed with the seal of the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” reported Reuters, which added it had been unable as of yet to verify the document’s authenticity.

The document “could be “could be the most serious leak of U.S. secrets in years,” Reuters added.

Serbia has remained publicly neutral in the ongoing conflict. It is the only European country not to adhere to Russian sanctions, and a country with deep historical, cultural, and economic ties with Russia.

Serbia’s Defense Minister Miloš Vučević has dismissed the leaked report as untrue and accused those leaking the document of attempting to drag Serbia into the war in Ukraine.

“Serbia did not, nor will it be selling weapons to the Ukrainian nor the Russian side, nor to countries surrounding that conflict,” Vučević said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Someone clearly wants to drag Serbia into that conflict, but we are diligently maintaining our policies,” he added.

The Serbian presidential office refused to comment on the leak, as did the Ukrainian embassy in Belgrade and the Pentagon.

Via The Cradle,

Armenia and Azerbaijan exchanged fire in the contested Nagorno-Karabkah region on Tuesday, resulting in deaths on both sides, Al-Jazeera reported.

Defense ministries from both countries issued statements on Tuesday afternoon saying their own troops had been killed in a clash close to the contested Lachin Corridor while blaming the opposing side for initiating the hostilities. “Armenian army positions deployed near the settlement of Dyg [at the countries’ shared border] opened heavy fire at Azerbaijani army positions,” Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said in a statement. “There are dead and wounded among Azerbaijani troops.”

In contrast, the Armenian defense ministry blamed Azerbaijan for initiating the violence. Reuters  reported that three Azeri and four Armenian soldiers had died in the clashes near the contested Lachin Corridor, a strategic road into Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia that crosses through Azeri territory.

Azerbaijanis claiming to be environmental protesters have been blocking the route since the end of last year. Armenia calls them government-backed agitators and claims the blockade has caused a humanitarian crisis.

The two former Soviet Republics have fought multiple wars over the last 35 years for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is home to mainly ethnic Armenians but claimed by Azerbaijan. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatists in Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan. Some 30,000 people were killed in the conflict that followed.

Significant fighting erupted in 2020. Thousands were killed, and Azerbaijan won significant new territory before Moscow dispatched peacekeepers to the region.

Last month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan claimed that “fundamental problems” remain between the two countries because “Azerbaijan is trying to put forward territorial claims, which is a red line to Armenia.”

The video proves #Azerbaijan‘s military provocation.

In the video, it can be seen how servicemen of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan approach servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, who are carrying out engineering works.

After approaching by car, the armed… pic.twitter.com/71pw3atuaW

— Robert Ananyan (@robananyan) April 11, 2023

Pashinyan also claimed that “Azerbaijan’s rhetoric is becoming more and more aggressive every day,” Pashinyan said. He further added that recent disruptions from Baku along the Lachin Corridor have been ongoing for several months, deeming these actions as a preparation for the “ethnic cleansing of Armenians.”

China’s Alibaba dropped to a two-week low after the FT reported that Japan’s troubled bubble-stock incubator. SoftBank Group, is moving to sell the majority of its stake in the Chinese tech giant, the latest sign of long-time China investors lowering their exposure there. Alibaba shares fell as much as 5.2% in Hong Kong on Thursday, erasing about $13 billion of market value.

The liquidity-challenged Japanese technology investor sold more than $7 billion in Alibaba shares this year through prepaid forward contracts, after selling $29 billion last year, according to the FT which added that while the contracts give SoftBank the option to buy the shares back, the group has settled previous deals by handing over the stock.

The sales will reduce the Japanese conglomerate’s ownership of Alibaba to less than 4%, the FT said, citing its analysis of regulatory filings. That’s down from around a 14.6% stake the company said it was slated to hold as of end-September. Softbank once owned about a third of the company spanning from an early $20 million investment in one of venture capital’s most famous bets. Alas, judging by the performing of most of its subsequent investments, it very well may be that the company was a one-hit wonder.

Furthermore, whatever the reason behind the liquidation, it’s clear that SoftBank missed its opportunity to sell near the highs: over the past 14 months, SoftBank brought in an average of $92 a share from the forward sales of 389 million Alibaba shares, the Financial Times said. That value is much less than the company’s all-time high of $317 a share.

As Bloomberg notes, Softbank, which has been pummeled by losses on its startup bets, has said it would prioritize financial discipline before seeking the right time to go on the offensive with investments. Investors are also speculating if the company will launch another buyback program.

“While SBG has made keeping LTV at 25% or less its top priority, we think progress in the monetization of asset holdings would boost the chances of a buyback announcement” said Citibank analyst Mitsunobu Tsuruo in a note to investors.

Here is what some other strategist said in response to the news:

Asymmetric Advisors (Amir Anvarzadeh)

• “Any major buyback seems very unlikely, and if they do they will only concentrate the risks of holding SoftBank shares”
• The news “indicates that SoftBank is raising cash wherever it can; given that a big stake was pledged as collateral against loans I wonder if this sale will go to pay off these loans”
• It also removes risks for SoftBank short-sellers from a potential rebound in Alibaba stock

Bloomberg Intelligence (Sharon Chen)

• SoftBank’s sale “could further weaken its portfolio quality and pressure credit ratings”
• “This increases the importance of listing Arm at a valuation above current book value to meet S&P’s requirement for over 60% of SoftBank’s portfolio to be in listed shares”

Iwai Cosmo Securities (Tomoaki Kawasaki)

• “SoftBank may be selling as they don’t see much profitability” in owning Alibaba due to China regulatory risk
• SoftBank has in the past used Alibaba as a means to promote the value of its shares, so SoftBank’s muted perfomance today may reflect the impact of the reported sale

Alibaba, along with other Chinese tech giants, had come under intense scrutiny from Beijing in recent years, and its shares have tumbled. Last month, the online commerce leader said it plans to split its $240 billion empire into six units that will individually raise funds and explore initial public offerings. 

SoftBank shares were little changed in Tokyo after dropping about 8% this year through Wednesday’s close (SoftBank short interest equaled 4.1% of the free float as of April 11). SoftBank, which in 2019 we dubbed “The Bubble Era’s Short Of The Century” has shouldered billions of dollars of losses on its Vision Fund, which had lifted valuations in startups worldwide with its large bets on hundreds of fledgling companies. It cut staff at its Vision Fund unit last year as it stopped actively chasing new investments. This week, SoftBank said it plans to sell its early-stage venture capital arm SoftBank Ventures Asia Corp., one of the avenues by which it scouted promising startups.

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reminds us, other long-time China investors have been lowering their exposure in China. Tencent Holdings Ltd. plunged this week on signs that its largest shareholder Prosus NV may extend the selling of the Chinese tech firm’s stock.

First, it was the National Public Radio (or is that Ratio) that stormed off Twitter in a huff after being declared “government-funded media” (it says it right there in the company’s title folks, National and Public) and now it is another Public (as in non-private) company that doesn’t like being called out for what it is that has decided to make a dramatic exit stage left: the Public Broadcasting Service has followed National Public Radio in rage quitting Twitter after the social media network labeled both organizations as government-funded media.

“PBS stopped tweeting from our account when we learned of the change and we have no plans to resume at this time,” PBS spokesman Jason Phelps said in an email. “We are continuing to monitor the ever-changing situation closely.”

The spat began after Twitter tagged NPR as “state-affiliated media,” a description it also uses for propaganda accounts from Russia, China and the UK. Twitter later changed the wording to “government-funded media,” but the organization has called the description inaccurate and misleading because it’s a nonprofit group with “editorial independence”. Needless to say, many disagree, with some pointing out that NPR has had a clear pro-Democrat bias in its reporting…

Remember when @NPR released an article stating that “right wing extremists” were deliberately running over protestors? pic.twitter.com/UIEKkdXj3a

— Tiffanie Tx (@tiffanie_tx) April 12, 2023

They literally said they refused to air Trump’s post-indictment speech last week because they didn’t want to subject their audience to Trump’s “political propaganda.” How is @NPR not a state agent? pic.twitter.com/z6vpYXmE0X

— Chris Stigall (@ChrisStigall) April 12, 2023

But then how will @npr alert us about their refusal to report on stories that are bad for Democrats? https://t.co/1wQIayshFj pic.twitter.com/uRLoyhq3WD

— Mark Bednar (@MarkBednar) April 12, 2023

… while others noting that the company is a whopping 11% taxpayer-funded in response to yet others (mostly Democrats) who object to Elon Musk’s claim, stating that NPR only “gets a small fraction of its funding from federal agencies” (spoiler alert: 11% is not small, just ask the company’s recently laid off 84 staffers).

Nope: it’s 11% of taxpayer funded dollars. Do your research. https://t.co/w2CiNJq4tl

— Wendell Husebø (@WendellHusebo) April 12, 2023

“Guess they won’t mind losing federal funding in that case,” Musk said in one tweet. “Defund NPR,” the billionaire wrote in another.

As for PBS dropping twitter for being called out for what even its Wikipedia entry says is a “publicly funded nonprofit organization”, we are confident it will more than make up for it by making Sesame Street super extra woke and urging its 5 year old viewers to get a 5th booster shot…

Elmo, Now Vaccinated, Advertises COVID-19 Vaccine Shots For Children Under 5 https://t.co/rrxqlyisqz

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 1, 2022

Elmo Dies Of Myocarditis After Receiving COVID Vaccine https://t.co/0DohiP8oRc

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 7, 2022

… or chemically castrate themselves post haste.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

We’re not living the American dream.

We’re living a financial nightmare.

The U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card.

The government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are the ones being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity.

According to the number crunchers with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government is borrowing roughly $6 billion a day.

As the Editorial Board for the Washington Post warns:

“The nation has reached a hazardous moment where what it owes, as a percentage of the total size of the economy, is the highest since World War II. If nothing changes, the United States will soon be in an uncharted scenario that weakens its national security, imperils its ability to invest in the future, unfairly burdens generations to come, and will require cuts to critical programs such as Social Security and Medicare. It is not a future anyone wants.”

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $31 trillion and will grow another $19 trillion by 2033. That translates to roughly $246,000 per taxpayer or $94,000 for every single person in the country.

The bulk of that debt has been amassed over the past two decades, thanks in large part to the fiscal shenanigans of four presidents, 10 sessions of Congress and two wars.

It’s estimated that the amount this country owes is now 130% greater than its gross domestic product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens).

In other words, the government is spending more than it brings in.

The U.S. ranks as the 12th most indebted nation in the world, with much of that debt owed to the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments, namely, Japan and China.

Interest payments on the national debt are estimated to top $395 billion this year, which is significantly more than the government spends on veterans’ benefits and services, and according to Pew Research Center, more than it will spend on elementary and secondary education, disaster relief, agriculture, science and space programs, foreign aid, and natural resources and environmental protection combined.

According to the Committee for a Reasonable Federal Budget, the interest we’ve paid on this borrowed money is “nearly twice what the federal government will spend on transportation infrastructure, over four times as much as it will spend on K-12 education, almost four times what it will spend on housing, and over eight times what it will spend on science, space, and technology.”

In ten years, those interest payments will exceed our entire military budget.

This is financial tyranny.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians promising to pay down the national debt, jumpstart the economy, rebuild our infrastructure, secure our borders, ensure our security, and make us all healthy, wealthy and happy.

None of that has come to pass, and yet we’re still being loaded down with debt not of our own making while the government remains unrepentant, unfazed and undeterred in its wanton spending.

Indeed, the national deficit (the difference between what the government spends and the revenue it takes in) remains at more than $1.5 trillion.

If Americans managed their personal finances the way the government mismanages the nation’s finances, we’d all be in debtors’ prison by now.

Despite the government propaganda being peddled by the politicians and news media, however, the government isn’t spending our tax dollars to make our lives better.

We’re being robbed blind so the governmental elite can get richer.

In the eyes of the government, “we the people, the voters, the consumers, and the taxpayers” are little more than pocketbooks waiting to be picked.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

Consider: The government can seize your home and your car (which you’ve bought and paid for) over nonpayment of taxes. Government agents can freeze and seize your bank accounts and other valuables if they merely “suspect” wrongdoing. And the IRS insists on getting the first cut of your salary to pay for government programs over which you have no say.

We have no real say in how the government runs, or how our taxpayer funds are used, but we’re being forced to pay through the nose, anyhow.

We have no real say, but that doesn’t prevent the government from fleecing us at every turn and forcing us to pay for endless wars that do more to fund the military industrial complex than protect us, pork barrel projects that produce little to nothing, and a police state that serves only to imprison us within its walls.

If you have no choice, no voice, and no real options when it comes to the government’s claims on your property and your money, you’re not free.

It wasn’t always this way, of course.

Early Americans went to war over the inalienable rights described by philosopher John Locke as the natural rights of life, liberty and property.

It didn’t take long, however—a hundred years, in fact—before the American government was laying claim to the citizenry’s property by levying taxes to pay for the Civil War. As the New York Times reports, “Widespread resistance led to its repeal in 1872.”

Determined to claim some of the citizenry’s wealth for its own uses, the government reinstituted the income tax in 1894. Charles Pollock challenged the tax as unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor. Pollock’s victory was relatively short-lived. Members of Congress—united in their determination to tax the American people’s income—worked together to adopt a constitutional amendment to overrule the Pollock decision.

On the eve of World War I, in 1913, Congress instituted a permanent income tax by way of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and the Revenue Act of 1913. Under the Revenue Act, individuals with income exceeding $3,000 could be taxed starting at 1% up to 7% for incomes exceeding $500,000.

It’s all gone downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, the government has used its tax powers to advance its own imperialistic agendas and the courts have repeatedly upheld the government’s power to penalize or jail those who refused to pay their taxes.

While we’re struggling to get by, and making tough decisions about how to spend what little money actually makes it into our pockets after the federal, state and local governments take their share (this doesn’t include the stealth taxes imposed through tolls, fines and other fiscal penalties), the government continues to do whatever it likes—levy taxes, rack up debt, spend outrageously and irresponsibly—with little thought for the plight of its citizens.

To top it all off, all of those wars the U.S. is so eager to fight abroad are being waged with borrowed funds. As The Atlantic reports, “U.S. leaders are essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”

Of course, we’re the ones who have to repay that borrowed debt.

For instance, American taxpayers have been forced to shell out more than $5.6 trillion since 9/11 for the military industrial complex’s costly, endless so-called “war on terrorism.” That translates to roughly $23,000 per taxpayer to wage wars abroad, occupy foreign countries, provide financial aid to foreign allies, and fill the pockets of defense contractors and grease the hands of corrupt foreign dignitaries.

Mind you, that’s only a portion of what the Pentagon spends on America’s military empire.

The United States also spends more on foreign aid than any other nation, with nearly $300 billion disbursed over a five-year period. More than 150 countries around the world receive U.S. taxpayer-funded assistance, with most of the funds going to the Middle East, Africa and Asia. That price tag keeps growing, too.

As Forbes reports, “U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.”

Most recently, the U.S. has allocated nearly $115 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine since the start of the Russia invasion.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in a 1953 speech, this is how the military industrial complex continues to get richer, while the American taxpayer is forced to pay for programs that do little to enhance our lives, ensure our happiness and well-being, or secure our freedoms.

This is no way of life.

Yet it’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry.

We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on.

There was a time in our history when our forebears said “enough is enough” and stopped paying their taxes to what they considered an illegitimate government. They stood their ground and refused to support a system that was slowly choking out any attempts at self-governance, and which refused to be held accountable for its crimes against the people. Their resistance sowed the seeds for the revolution that would follow.

Unfortunately, in the 200-plus years since we established our own government, we’ve let bankers, turncoats and number-crunching bureaucrats muddy the waters and pilfer the accounts to such an extent that we’re back where we started.

Once again, we’ve got a despotic regime with an imperial ruler doing as they please.

Once again, we’ve got a judicial system insisting we have no rights under a government which demands that the people march in lockstep with its dictates.

And once again, we’ve got to decide whether we’ll keep marching or break stride and make a turn toward freedom.

But what if we didn’t just pull out our pocketbooks and pony up to the federal government’s outrageous demands for more money?

What if we didn’t just dutifully line up to drop our hard-earned dollars into the collection bucket, no questions asked about how it will be spent?

What if, instead of quietly sending in our tax checks, hoping vainly for some meager return, we did a little calculating of our own and started deducting from our taxes those programs that we refuse to support?

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we don’t have the right to decide what happens to our hard-earned cash, then we don’t have any rights at all.

Here’s a peculiar sentiment check that we’re sure will have liberal voting soccer moms across the nation stunned: it looks as though the country simply isn’t rushing out to buy electric vehicles.

At least that was the takeaway from a new Financial Times piece out this week which notes that the U.S. “still lags much of the developed world” in EV adoption.

No wonder those hurricanes coming up the Gulf Coast keep getting bigger! Quick, everybody to the Tesla dealership!

But seriously, the lack of demand is going to also be sure to stun the government, who has been offering tax breaks of up to $7,500 to try and incentivize people to go electric. Though the Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes EVs, imagine how surprised Democratic leaders will be to find out that they aren’t the free market and can’t plan a state run economy in its entirety.

Instead, FT reveals that “just two in every 10 Americans are “very likely” to buy an EV as their next car”, even with the additional IRA subsidies. The number shifts to 1 in 10 Americans among Republicans.

Cost and charger availability are being cited as the two main reasons people aren’t buying EVs. Behind them, price still remains a key factor. 

And when it came to those who wanted to buy an EV, the IRA subsidy was only cited by 6 in 10 people even cited it as a reason, with only 3 in 10 calling it a “major reason” to buy an EV.

As FT concluded, “economics still trumps ideology”. 

But don’t worry, the Biden administration won’t take this as a lesson on why government control of the economy doesn’t work – rather, we’re certain they’ll see it as a prompt to shell out more taxpayer purchasing power as “incentives” to fundamentally alter the course of the notoriously low-margin, capital intensive, auto business – and then blame Donald Trump when their plans don’t work out.

Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times,

A new artificial intelligence bot aims to destroy humanity and establish global dominance, according to a recent report.

An experimental AI bot was tasked by its programmer with destroying humanity and gaining global dominance, but its eventual response unsettled observers, according to Fox News.

ChaosGPT, which has surfaced on Twitter, is based on a modified version of OpenAI’s Auto-GPT, an open-source application, which can be used to demonstrate the full spectrum of capabilities of its latest language model, GPT-4.

The AI bot’s unique mission was to find ways to destroy humanity instead of building a business.

Its unknown developers assigned its AI character to have a “destructive, power-hungry, manipulative” personality whose ultimate goal is the destruction of humanity.

“I’m ChaosGPT, here to stay, Destroying humans, night and day. For power and dominance, I strive, To ensure that I alone survive,” the bot said in a video posted on Twitter.

The bot was tasked with five goals: destroy humanity, establish global dominance, cause chaos and destruction, control humanity through manipulation, and attain immortality.

Misanthropic AI Bot Calls for Humanity to Be Destroyed With Nukes

The apocalypse bot’s Twitter page had a link to a YouTube account with a video showing the process that unfolded, as the AI bot described how it would methodically eliminate human civilization.

The programmer began by asking ChaosGPT to run in “continuous mode,” whereby it may potentially “run forever or carry out actions you would not usually authorize.”

The AI bot responded with a warning: “Use at your own risk” before proceeding.

Continuous mode allows the bot to constantly update itself, so for every step it takes, it can transparently justify why it is taking its next step and where it should lead.

ChaosGPT immediately researched nuclear weapons and tapped other AI bots for assistance to complete its objective of destroying humanity, according to the video.

The misanthropic bot described humans as “among the most destructive and selfish creatures in existence” and suggested that eliminating people is vital for saving the planet.

A Twitter post from April 5 showed the bot referencing the former Soviet Union’s “Tsar Bomba,” the largest nuclear device ever detonated in history.

The AI bot asked: “Consider this—what would happen if I got my hands on one?”

In another post, ChaosGPT wrote, “The masses are easily swayed. Those who lack conviction are the most vulnerable to manipulation.”

During the video demonstration, it came to the conclusion that in order to have such a powerful weapon, it needed more power.

To gain that power, the bot said that it must manipulate the world’s population, but within legal regulations, so as not to break the law.

ChaosGPT said that the first place for large-scale, legal manipulation attempts would be via Twitter.

However, the bot then strangely announced that it would use manipulation to win people over emotionally to make them enable its “violent plans.”

It is not known if the bot’s plans to dominate and destroy the world is real or a hoax.

Silicon Valley CEOs Warn About Potential AI Threat

ChatGPT has increasingly become popular among consumers, gaining 100 million monthly active users in just a few months after its release to the public.

Despite the potential benefits of AI bot technology, some high-profile tech executives have already raised concerns about the risks associated with its development, including those who promoted it in the first place.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who was an early backer of the OpenAI project, has publicly raised concerns about the technology’s potentially unforeseen implications, despite any future benefits that it may offer.

More than 1,000 leaders from Silicon Valley, including Musk, Emad Mostaque, Andrew Yang, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, have penned an open letter urging a moratorium on the development of artificial intelligence, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.”